Casagrande: The duality of Auburn’s 18-point rivalry loss. Bad, could be worse

This is an opinion column.

As the college football world wobbled off its axis in Nashville, a grass-stained Payton Thorne walked past an empty doghouse and into the Auburn locker room.

It was a stroll that's become familiar as the Tigers.

Yet the feel from a third straight Auburn loss - this one 31-13 to No. 5 Georgia - wasn't like the others. It's evolving. And they're fighting the mental to keep this from becoming routine because 2-4 at the season's midpoint isn't the standard of this program.

That said, the three-score loss to an ancient rival was the most OK three-score loss to an ancient rival possible.

The grass-stained quarterback embodied the duality of a loss.

Not bad.

Not terrible.

Just ... OK.

Auburn both never threatened an upset while avoiding the knockout punch until the gorgeous Athens afternoon became evening.

While it avoided a turnover for the first time in seven games, this was a loss dotted with the kind of mistakes that separate monumental upsets and OK losses.

On the bright side: Georgia never imposed its will a week after losing to the team that lost to Vanderbilt on Saturday.

On the dark side, Auburn couldn't take advantage on a day Georgia was equally (but proportionately) just OK.

It was good for the team with the nation's worst turnover margin (-11) to play 60 full minutes without one. Auburn hadn't done that since last year's loss to New Mexico State.

It's bad the Tigers are still 18 points worse without them.

Good: Auburn held Georgia to 381 yards (after the Dawgs had 581 last week) while gaining 337 of its own.

Bad: Loss.

Even the response ran the full spectrum.

"We're not playing winning football," a dejected coach Hugh Freeze said.

"We have the talent to win a lot of games," running back Jarquez Hunter said. "We could be undefeated right now. But it's just the little things we messed up."

Those moments weren't as devastating as a fourth-quarter Pick 6, but they added up on a day requiring perfection.

There was the illegal substitution penalty on Georgia's first offensive possession. It was third-and-five, and the Bulldogs were stopped for no gain but the flag pumped life back into the drive. First down. There were similarities between that moment and a late-hit call early in the Arkansas game that resuscitated a stalled drive that ultimately ended in a Razorback touchdown.

Well, this one did, too.

Nine plays later, Trevor Etienne's two-yard run made it 7-0.

"Those are the things I'm talking about," Freeze said. "Heck, that's a 3-and-out to start the game. That's a reason to be jacked up and excited."

Later in the game, Thorne threw a beautiful ball to freshman receiver Malcolm Simmons that got a lot of hand and then some turf.

"Malcolm was the first to come up to me and say 'Coach, I should have caught that. It hit me right in the hands,'" Freeze said.

Two things were true on that one, too, and it embodies Auburn's position. It was a high-degree-of-difficulty catch. Part I of the equation was a perfectly thrown ball, but it required that little extra—an athletic catch—that's the bigger-picture difference between winning and losing competitive games.

Another moment speaks to that divide between 2-4 and something better.

It was fourth-and-one at the first play of the fourth quarter with Auburn down 21-10. The Tigers were at their own 44 and had the full quarter break to set things up. Convert and the drive continues with offensive momentum since Auburn scored a touchdown on its previous possession.

Instead, Thorne was swallowed in the backfield for a four-yard loss. Georgia needed just five plays to make it 28-10 after taking over at the 40.

Freeze, ever honest and not one to sit on details of this nature, explained the fourth-down folly afterward.

"Yeah, (Thorne) absolutely didn't go with what we had called," Freeze said. "Payton's a thinker. He knows football. He decided to try to run some type of zone read there. I think everybody was a little confused. But we definitely weren't on the same page there. I should have used one of our timeouts there, when I saw things were going awry."

It was supposed to be a handoff to Hunter to the left side of the line. The running back who scored the Tigers' lone touchdown among his 13 carries for 91 yards didn't say he was upset about the audible. Not exactly. But his face said a lot when he answered a question about it.

"I mean, fourth-and-one, we should have run the ball," Hunter said. "I don't know what the miscommunication was. We should have ran the ball."

And that's the crossroad of the moment Auburn faces.

It's 2-4 having lost three games by upset before covering a 22-point spread Saturday. The message from Freeze to the locker room was more forward-thinking than dwelling on what got them here.

"It was basically to not let that division come between the team," receiver KeAndre Lambert-Smith said. "We're going through a moment right now where adversity reveals character and builds it."

On Saturday, Auburn wasn't bad.

It didn't lose a heartbreaker.

The Tigers just weren't good enough, again.

The 31-13 loss found a way to be both encouraging and disheartening all at the same time.

Thorne walked off Saturday evening having navigated an interception-free game in the Tigers' fourth straight SEC loss.

Rough but obviously not the worst loss of the day.

The duality of the first Saturday in October, 2024.